


Joy in the World

by Jenna Hilary Sinclair (JennaHilary)



Series: Force of Nature [3]
Category: Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Genre: Christmas, Force of Nature, M/M, Sequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-18
Updated: 2013-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-05 02:00:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1088273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JennaHilary/pseuds/Jenna%20Hilary%20Sinclair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything I've written about Jack and Ennis is an alternate reality exploration of what might have happened if Jack had not died but had shown up at Pine Creek. </p><p>"Joy in the World" is a sequel to my Force of Nature series. I'm currently in the middle of writing Force of Nature, a three novel trilogy that explores what happens to Jack and Ennis once they honestly try to find a way to live together.  The first novel, Force of Nature: Earthquake, is complete and on this archive.  The second novel, Force of Nature: Storm, is also on the archive, but as of 12/18/13, it lacks a final chapter which I should have complete in mid-January 2014.  The third novel, Force of Nature: Fire, will be written in 2014.  </p><p>"Joy in the World" takes place twenty years after Force of Nature.  Jack and Ennis are sixty years old, not forty, and they each have married children and grandchildren. The story is a tiny slice in time set in 2004.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Joy in the World

The kids weren’t being let out any earlier than usual on this last day of school before Christmas in 2004, something Malcolm had complained about loud and long the day before. Not minding that he could keep the peace in an easy way, Jack had said that he’d come to the school so his grandson wouldn’t have to take the bus home. Jack understood that buses weren’t cool, though he was sure another word for cool was being used these days.

He’d made sure his truck was in line in plenty of time, before three o’clock, because he didn’t want to jockey for position with all those holiday-stressed-out moms, with Christmas only five days away. When the middle school doors barged open and the boys and girls started pouring out, he squinted through the gloom. Thick clouds hovered overhead, and snow had been coming down steady as a tick-tock since the night before. It didn’t snow all that often in Abilene, but of course it would with him being stuck there a while. All his life, wherever he was -- Wyoming or Texas or New Mexico -- it seemed to Jack that it had always snowed way more than it should. His bones shivered when it got cold; he just wasn’t made for it. He was made, he’d complained at the top of his lungs one February morning in Eagle Nest when the thermometer had taken a nose dive, for Miami Beach. Ennis had said if Jack wanted to make a fool of himself wearing one of those Speedo-things in Florida, he could, but Ennis wasn’t going down that road with him.

Sitting in the cab of his pick-up, Jack smiled at the thought of Ennis in something like a black thong. It was next to impossible to wrap his mind around his granite man showing off his scrawny ass to the men on the beach.

An especially large clump of snowflakes hit the windshield, and he watched the splat grow flat and runny under the relentless work of the defroster, turned up as warm as it would go. Over the years, he still hadn’t got used to shivering, but winter on their ranch back in New Mexico had its compensations. For instance, there was a spectacular view of the snow-dusted mountains out their back windows. Besides, he’d learned to dress warmly. Ennis made sure of that and usually had some cold-weather, arctic-approved expedition gear under the Christmas tree wrapped up for him. The fleece-lined gloves he was wearing right now were a gift from last year, and the year before that --

“Hey, Granddad!” Jack jumped like a startled virgin when Malcolm pulled open the door and hopped in with all the energy of a twelve-almost-thirteen-year-old boy. “I wasn’t sure you’d remember.”

Jack decided not to take offense at that. No doubt, to Malcolm his sixty years made him seem like he was more than halfway to being a forgetful old coot.

“How’d your day go?” He grinned like the Grinch. “Do anything interesting, like go visit Santy Claus and sit on his lap?”

Malcolm had been teased by his grandfather almost from the day he was born. Now he shot Jack a long-suffering look and said, “No, we cut out little paper Christmas trees and put sprinkles all over them. That’s what I’m giving you for Christmas.” The kid swiped off his snow-flecked black cap, and Jack took the opportunity to tousle his dark brown hair, that he had like all the Twist men. Malcolm shook his head like a terrier. “Stop that!”

Jack put the truck in gear and looked at the side mirror. “When you’re six feet tall, I’ll stop. I got news for you.”

“Yeah?” Malcolm sat up straight. “Is it Mom?”

“Put on your seatbelt.”

Obediently, Malcolm reached around and got himself strapped in. “Is it the baby?”

“Yep. Your dad called from the hospital this morning and said the doctors didn’t want to wait no longer. They gave your mom something to make her go into labor.” He glanced at his watch and then pulled out into the slow-moving traffic of the school driveway. “You might have a sister or brother already, but for pretty sure it’ll be sometime today.”

“Good. Mom’s been in that hospital, like, forever. Time for her to come home.”

“Forever” translated to twenty-two days. The last eighteen of them Jack had been living in his son Bobby’s house, because sometimes only a grandparent could step into this kind of emergency situation. Courtney endured doctor-ordered bed rest on the third floor of Hendrick Hospital, Bobby traveled out-of-town for work trips he couldn’t avoid, and Jack took care of the house and the boy, not to mention wearing a path between Westminster Drive and the hospital, making sure Malcolm got to visit his mom. Jack hadn’t complained out loud about being away from home in Eagle Nest or his own business except on his every-night phone calls to Ennis. He loved his son and his son’s family, and since Malcolm was his only grandchild until this new one was born, he doted on the boy for sure. Even so, sometimes it seemed all this boy-caring and house-sitting for what felt like a bunch of days was asking a lot of a man.

Jack thought it was time for Courtney to come home too.

The moms picking up their kids were cautious driving in the snow; they inched through the parking lot, not even out into the street yet. The swish-swish of the wipers warred with the roar of the buses starting up and the kids yelling as they threw snowballs at each other. Jack wondered if maybe he should stop off at Brookshire’s grocery store and get some flowers for Courtney and his new grandbaby.

“Granddad?”

He glanced at Malcolm, who was scrunched down in the seat, contemplating his fingers. The boy hadn’t started to grow quite yet, but there were signs that the teenage years were going to hit soon. His voice squeaked occasionally, like now.

Jack figured he better be serious in answering. “What?”

“How did you know you wanted to be with Pappy and not Grandmom Laura?”

Good thing he had two hands on the wheel or he would’ve swerved into a tree, he was that startled. Guess this was another sign of the boy getting older, that he was asking the big questions.

“Uh.... That’s Grandmom Lureen,” he corrected, buying time. It was understandable, as Lureen had died twenty years ago, and Malcolm had never known her. “Why’s this on your mind?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” The boy shrugged in his red jacket and then immediately said, “The girls sure are getting tall this year.”

Jack hummed agreement, all of a sudden understanding.

“Jill Zimmerman, she’s sort of pretty.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah. And she wears this shirt that shows....” If it was possible, Malcolm ducked his head even lower, so it seemed his chin was jabbing a hole in his chest. Jack felt a wave of sympathy, because he remembered all too well how confusing and mortifying puberty could be. It’d been even worse for him, a gay boy growing into a gay man. But he also remembered how amazing it had been to see those girls grow breasts that stretched their sweaters in confounding ways. Jack never had been moved by boobs of any sort, but even he’d had days in sixth grade when he couldn’t take his eyes off the sway of them.

“Anyway,” Malcolm continued, though his voice was muffled in his jacket, “we were playing dodge ball in gym, fooling around. Free time, you know?”

“I guess you got a lot of free time today.”

“Yeah.”

“And?” he prompted, when the silence got a little long. “You were playing ball in the gym?”

“And she pushed me up against the wall and kissed me,” Malcolm said in a rush. “Got me right here.” Malcolm touched his lips, just left of center.

Jack’s own lips twitched, but he captured the grin that threatened to escape. “Well, that’s good, right? First kiss and all.” He shoved Malcolm’s shoulder. “Time to celebrate that.”

The boy sort of unfolded and turned to him, flashing an embarrassed but triumphant smile. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. It’s good, ain’t it?”

“Isn’t it,” Jack corrected automatically. “You bet it is. It’s nice that the girls are noticing you.”

Malcolm bit his lip. “But I was wondering.... Suppose I turn out like you instead of like Dad? So I don’t want to kiss her back?”

It was clear that this would not be good news. “Well, did you want to kiss her back?”

“Oh, yeah,” Malcolm said reverently. “I did kiss her back, except it happened so fast. But what if I change?”

“Scooter,” he said, using the childhood pet name, “that ain’t gonna happen.”

“But how can you be sure? You changed.”

And the boy now was scared that he’d grow up to love men the way Jack loved Ennis. Inside, Jack sighed, because as much as the world was getting a little bit better for people like him, still boys would fear being different.

Well, he wasn’t going to spill his guts to his grandson, but there were some things he could explain. Jack supposed that he should consider these kinds of hard questions a compliment, that the boy felt comfortable asking. He’d always been a talker, just like Jack and just like his father. Every summer since Malcolm had been five years old, he’d spent time at their small ranch, learning to ride with Ennis, helping Jack out with his equipment rental business, and being part of their lives. Sometimes Ennis’s lone grandson and his granddaughters were with them too, and their house at the high end of the valley got crowded and noisy, but that was okay.

“I didn’t change,” Jack said as calm and determined as he could. “I’ve been the same all the way through, only I got off track with your grandmom. Which wasn’t the worst thing, because it meant your father was born, and without him, you wouldn’t have come along.”

“Yeah, but—”

“When you kiss a person, you feel a certain way, right? Like you want to keep kissing them. You felt that way with this girl, and—“

“Is that the way you felt about Pappy?”

He could remember it like it was yesterday, that first tentative kiss in the tent on Brokeback, the press of Ennis’s lips that had changed his whole life, really. The night before, the sex, that’d been important too, but it was the look on that boy’s face the second night -- so starved and so scared, but finally getting what he wanted, and what he wanted had been Jack, even though he hardly knew it -- that Jack carried inside him like a diamond nestled up against his heart. Later, a lot later, like twenty-five years later, Ennis had said in the warm darkness of the bedroom they finally shared, “It was like God gave me the whole world that night. I just didn’t know what to do with it.”

“Granddad?”

Jack pulled out of the memory that was sacred to him. He hadn’t seen Ennis now in two and a half whole weeks, and he was missing him something fierce.

“Yeah,” Jack said. “That’s how I felt about Pappy. Still do, even after all these years.”

“I don’t want to kiss a boy,” Malcolm said definitely. “It’s kinda gross.” He aimed a quick look Jack’s way. “Sorry, Granddad.”

“That’s okay. It’s not for everybody.”

“So, since I want to kiss girls now, real bad, you think that means that’s how I’ll stay?”

“Yep. I think that’s how you’ll stay. That’s the way it works.”

“Good.”

Malcolm didn’t say anything more and instead reached toward the radio to find a station playing Christmas music. As Jack watched him twiddling with the dial, nostalgia and a melancholy fondness stabbed him. This was probably the last Christmas, maybe even the last visit, when Malcolm would talk to him so freely. Next year, the boy would be different, more a man than a boy. He would have his secrets and keep them, even if they weren’t anything like the secrets that Jack had harbored when he’d been that age.

The traffic opened up, and he was able to put some distance between them and the school. He stopped for those flowers, and it took them a good fifteen minutes to get through the check-out line. That gave him time to pull out his cell phone and look to see if Ennis had called, which he sometimes did before he tromped outside to feed the pregnant mares in late afternoon. There wasn’t anything there, no message or sign of a missed call. That was okay, because they’d only missed talking at night one time these last eighteen days, so he’d hear from Ennis later. Jack pretty much aimed his days toward those few quiet minutes with his man, before his head hit the pillow. Hearing Ennis’s deep voice telling him the price of grain had gone up again went some way toward soothing the frustration he felt at being away from home so long.

“Nothing from my dad yet?” Malcolm asked as they moved a few steps closer to the cashier.

“Nope,” Jack said. “But having a baby takes time, you know.”

When they finally got to Malcolm’s home, Jack set to work making a batch of chili and some cornbread. He tripled the recipe so he could freeze some. He figured Courtney would need it, especially since Bobby was useless in the kitchen. Malcolm spent part of the time keeping him company, but then he disappeared to play video games in the den.

Along about five-thirty, Jack started spooning the chili into bowls. “Malcolm,” he hollered, “go put the Christmas lights on and then come eat.” A while ago he and the boy had gone into the storage shed out back and got out the lights, the artificial tree, and all the decorations for the house. That’d been a good way to spend the weekend with Malcolm and keep him occupied.

They took their food into the living room where there was a big picture window that showed how white was truly blanketing the city. The evening news played in the background, but mainly Jack sat and watched the snow falling, soft as a whisper, tender and mild like the old Christmas carol said.

“It’s coming down like angels’ wings,” he said absently.

“What?” Malcolm wasn’t paying any attention to the TV either. Jack reached over and used the remote to mute the sound.

“You haven’t ever heard Pappy say that?”

“Guess not.”

“When it’s snowing like this, Pappy says these are feathers from the angels shaking out their wings.”

Malcolm wrinkled his freckled nose. “That sounds....”

“He used to say that to Emily.”

“Oh. Girl stuff.”

Girl stuff that Ennis was so good at. Jack hadn’t known that about Ennis when he’d just about exploded on the mountain for wanting his touch, that his hard man had that particular kind of softness to him. Jack remembered watching Ennis with his first granddaughter cuddled in his lap, listening as he spun the tale about angels’ wings for her. Emily had looked up at her grandpop with big, adoring eyes, as if he held all the wisdom of the ages. Junior had snapped a picture of them like that, and it was still one of Jack’s favorites.

Ennis was prone to tales like that, fanciful and often centered on the doings up in the clouds, which perplexed Jack from time to time. Neither one of them was the church-going kind. Still, he would never ask Ennis to stop. Some of the best times he recalled, times of peace and real understanding between them, came when Ennis unbent enough to let loose this creative, questing, wondering side of him. Most often in bed, no sex involved, just quiet talking at the end of a day, but sometimes in the autumn when they took the horses out for a ride in the mid-afternoon. The sunshine would fall around them like spun gold, the leaves would rustle in nature’s music, the breeze would touch Jack’s face with unseen, inexplicable fingers, and the horses under them, that Ennis had rescued and made whole, would move so smoothly it seemed like Jack wasn’t riding at all but was part of the horse, part of the world in a way he sure hadn’t felt before him and Ennis had got settled.

They’d stop on a little rise and lean forward in their saddles, and they’d look up, up, up into the folds of the mountains to the very top, to where the heavens began. Or they’d turn around and look down, down, down into the valley, to where their house and their ranch looked so small. So small for all the dreams that place held. Yeah, sometimes then Ennis would start talking, spinning his stories about heaven, and angels, and the breath of the wind that carried a hint of life’s mysteries. They were kids’ stories, like being born was sliding down a sliding board from way up high, and they both knew they weren’t real, but that didn’t mean they weren’t important to Jack because of the glimpse it gave him of the man inside.

It was quite something, to listen to Ennis spin tales. He’d got better at it as the years went by.

Jack was washing up in the kitchen when the phone rang and he reached to get it off the wall even before he dried his hands. Whoever it was, he’d be glad. It was Bobby’s voice at the other end, and something in his chest clutched and hurt until he heard the important words, that everything had gone great and everybody was fine. And then a new kind of good feeling took hold of him, because now there was a good chance he wouldn’t be in this house for Christmas, with Ennis stuck alone far away. He could go home.

“Get your coat, Malcolm,” he said to the boy who was standing by his elbow. “We’re going to go meet your new baby sister.”

It took forever to get to the hospital, since the route went right by Abilene’s only mall and the shoppers were out in force, even in the snowstorm that made the roads slippery.

He wanted to yell “stupid fucking idiot!” when the third clueless driver tried to cut into his lane. Any fool should know that more space was needed in these conditions, but he restrained himself because of the youngster sitting next to him. He was getting pretty sick of minding his tongue.

“Granddad,” Malcolm said as they finally broke away from the traffic jam and Jack accelerated. Only a few blocks to go.

“Yeah?”

“Do you know any lesbians?”

Jack rolled his eyes. “Are you gonna ambush me like this every time we get in the truck? Why do you want to know that?”

“Because Tom Jasper had some pictures he brought to school of two girls kissing, and all the boys thought they were hot.”

Jack was not going to touch that one, no he was not. He’d leave this to the boy’s father, and he hoped Bobby was up to the task.

“No,” he said as he got through the last intersection before the hospital parking lot. “I do not know any lesbians.”

“How come?”

“What do you mean, how come? That’s just the way it is. Now reach back there for the flowers and fluff ‘em up or something. Do something useful.”

Damn, but the boy had sex -- a certain kind of sex, too -- on the brain, and it was Jack’s luck to be caught in it. What had got into him?

The trip up to the third floor was familiar, and Malcolm showed there was still plenty of kid left in the lurking-teenager-to-be when he burst out of the elevator doors as soon as they opened and ran down to his mother’s room. Jack did the grandfatherly thing and called to him to slow down, but the boy disappeared a few seconds later. By the time Jack turned into the room so he could see Courtney, Malcolm was already bending over where his mother held his new baby sister in the hospital bed.

Courtney looked flushed and tired, but still happy, and Bobby, standing on the other side of the bed, looked fit to bust with pride. Jack went around to shake his son’s hand, laughing and saying “How you doing, New Daddy?”

“I’m not the one who did all the work,” Bobby said. “Did you see Sarah Elizabeth? Isn’t she beautiful?”

“Come over here, Granddad,” Malcolm called.

Jack obliged and went back to look, prepared to say all the right things no matter what. The baby’s face was all scrunched up, in the way of newborns, and she had wisps of the Twist family hair. Seemed she had Courtney’s round face, though.

“Ah, ain’t she a darling. How you doing, sweetheart?” He reached out one finger and touched her chin, the incredibly soft skin. She turned toward it, her eyelids fluttering and not quite opening all the way.

“Would you like to hold her?” Courtney asked. He’d always got along fine with Bobby’s wife.

Of course he did, so he sat himself down in the visitor’s chair. Bobby came and did the transfer, carefully placing his daughter in Jack’s arms.

He looked down at her, wrapped up in a white blanket but with her hands curled up by her face, weighing hardly anything at all in Jack’s strong arms. She was so small and fragile, the product of love and care and Bobby building a home with Courtney. A product too, Malcolm had this day reminded him, of his own backseat fumbling with Lureen that had led to Bobby and that wrong turn he’d took away from the life he really should have been living. And yet, here was this baby, his granddaughter, pure and untouched by the troubles of the world. Life was wondrous, sometimes.

“Sarah Elizabeth Twist. Ain’t you something.”

She was new life in this Christmas season, and she belonged to him too, as well as to her parents. He would care for her. So tiny and beautiful.

“How’d you like that slide down to Earth, huh?” he whispered, pulling her up closer and bending over even more, so this conversation was only between him and her. “Or maybe you didn’t slide. I suppose you floated down instead, on one of those angel’s feathers that have been coming down outside. Did somebody up there pick you up and tuck you into the biggest feather? You been on quite a trip, little girl.”

He didn’t believe any of it, and yet it seemed right to say it, just then.

The flash of a camera went off, and he looked up quick to see Bobby already checking the photo in his new, digital camera.

“You could’ve warned me,” Jack complained.

“No, this is perfect,” Bobby said. “I knew Ennis would want a picture of you like that.”

After that, of course Malcolm had to hold the baby, and Courtney and Bobby had their tales to tell of how the day had gone and how Sarah Elizabeth had been born after a hard labor, but not nearly so bad as with Malcolm. The boy seemed to take some pride in that.

Sooner than Jack would have liked, a nurse came in to take the baby away. He was a male nurse named Brian, according to his name tag. Jack saw Malcolm’s eyes go wide and hoped he wouldn’t be getting any more questions during the ride back to the house.

But Malcolm was quiet as Jack negotiated the snow-covered streets, for which he was grateful. They drove through Dairy Queen first to get the boy some ice cream. “To celebrate,” Malcolm explained, and Jack broke down at the ordering window and got hot coffee and an order of fries for himself too. They parked in the lot and ate, and Jack watched the snow come down more and more, what he felt like he’d been doing all that day. A sort of tiredness came over him then, along with an ache that seemed to be more in his heart than in his bones. It’d been a long day, he supposed, and he was entitled to feel tired. It had been a long couple of weeks, but the end was in sight. It looked like he’d be able to make the nine hour drive home on Christmas Eve. He couldn’t wait to tell Ennis.

Jack turned the pick-up onto Westminster Drive, and as they got closer to the house, through the falling snow it seemed there was some vehicle sitting in front of it that hadn’t been there before. He blinked and turned up the defroster real quick, to make the view clearer. It was a truck, by God, it surely was. It was Ennis’s truck.

“Hey,” Malcolm said as he caught sight of it too. “You didn’t tell me Pappy was gonna be here.”

“I didn’t know,” Jack said with a hitch to his voice that he couldn’t control. Ennis didn’t know about the baby yet. He’d come to Abilene for another reason, and Jack was damned happy for it.

“A Christmas surprise,” Malcolm said, oblivious to the long history of love and heartache and care and anger and devotion and wrenching loss and hard work and simple, extraordinary need that bound Jack and Ennis. Jack should have known that this visit was as inevitable as the sun rising even behind banks of snow clouds.

Jack’s man was sitting huddled under a blanket in the cab of the pick-up, the side of his head resting against the window, sound asleep. Even through the foggy glass, the red tip of his nose and the gray whiskers of a sixty-year-old man who hadn’t shaved recently were visible. Jack shook his head as he took in the silent truck; Ennis never would run the engine for the heater, not if he froze to death, because that would be a waste of gas. Jack knocked against the window and saw those brown eyes startle open.

“Hey, old man, want to come in out of the cold?” he asked, loud enough to be heard over the falling snow.

Ennis showed him that hint of Ennis-smile that he was well familiar with. It started out slow and frozen but got warmer. Ennis reached for the handle to open the door at the same time Jack grasped it from the outside. A few seconds later and Ennis had slid to his feet in the snow. There he was in front of Jack, in the flesh.

They hugged, swift and definite. Jack wouldn’t likely forget the body-memory of how thin and wiry Ennis was and always had been, or the strength of a working man’s arms. All still there, along with a quick catch of breath and the warmth of body against body. There wasn’t any ache in his heart anymore.

He pulled back the better to see the man he’d missed so much, and the same feeling of sudden joy that he felt he saw in Ennis’s eyes too. “Damn, but it is good to see you,” Jack said.

“Got tired of waiting for that baby so you could get home. Come here.”

It wasn’t like them to show how they felt in front of others, not even before accepting family, but somehow Jack found that Ennis was kissing him. It would take a long separation, a difficult trip in a snowstorm, and the birth of Jack’s first granddaughter to make that happen, for his man was stubborn and slow to change, but Jack sure wasn’t complaining about this kiss, not at all.

Maybe that kiss went on a bit longer than Ennis expected, because Jack chuckled against his lips, gripped Ennis to him more tightly, and wouldn’t let go. Ennis worked against him for a few seconds and then gave in.

“There, you satisfied?” Ennis asked when they finally broke apart. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, but Jack didn’t mind. Ennis looked wide awake now, and his eyes were twinkling. Maybe that twist of his lips could be called a smirk. “You’d think we were teenagers.”

“Oh, no,” Jack denied with a laugh. “I know for sure we’re not. The teenager is over there.” He gestured toward Malcolm.

“Hi, Malcolm,” Ennis said. “Merry Christmas.”

“Hi, Pappy,” Malcolm said, and he came up to them. “I think the two of you should get married. They can do it now in Massachusetts, did you know that? I know a girl whose uncles are married now.” Malcolm looked hopefully into the bed of the pick-up, where a tarp covered intriguing lumps. “Hey, did you bring me any gifts?”

Ennis gave Jack a severe look, his brows drawn down. Jack spread his hands and said, “Don’t ask me, he’s been crazy all day.”

“Huh,” Ennis said, his all-purpose answer to many of life’s questions. To Malcolm, he said, “Maybe I did and maybe I didn’t bring gifts, but you get to carry it all inside. Come on, now, get to work.”

Malcolm climbed up and started unloading with a whoop and a holler.

A few hours later, the house was dark. Jack had unplugged the Christmas tree lights and locked the front and back doors. He’d cleaned up the kitchen from the two bowls of chili that Ennis had eaten, since he’d made the trip from Eagle Nest without stopping for dinner.

Jack entered the guest bedroom where he’d been staying. Ennis was already in bed with the lights out and the covers pulled up. “You asleep?” Jack asked as he pulled on his sleep pants and the sweatshirt he wore at night all winter long. He wasn't like Ennis, who slept in his boxers and nothing else; the man was either part-Eskimo or had anti-freeze in his veins.

“Nope. Waiting for you. I can hear your teeth chattering from here.”

“It’s these damn hardwood floors,” Jack complained. “My feet are fucking freezing.”

“Well, get in under the blankets and warm up.”

When Jack had woke up that morning, he hadn’t thought he’d get to sleep next to Ennis that night. He slid into bed and kept going until they were smack up against each other. Ennis put his arm around Jack and pulled him in tight, and Jack lifted his leg across Ennis’s thighs. He could hear the strong and steady, reliable beating of Ennis’s heart, with his ear pressed to that hairy chest. Jack didn’t know how it would be possible to get closer than they were, unless they made love, and he knew Ennis was too tired from the drive for that. Maybe tomorrow, though. He wanted that.

Damn, but it had been a long time since they’d laid together like this. Somebody else might have said that eighteen days apart wasn’t much, and that couples did better for a little alone time now and then. But Jack didn’t say that, and if he could get Ennis to talk on the subject, he knew Ennis wouldn’t say it either.

Ennis breathed across the top of his head, rustling his hair, a move that tended to tickle Jack. And then Ennis dropped a kiss there, where Jack knew damn well he was starting to show a bald spot, though Ennis kept denying he saw anything.

“You quit that,” he said softly. He ran the flat of his hand up and down Ennis’s chest and sighed with contentment.

“You’d think Bobby would put in wall-to-wall carpet for warmer feet. He’s making enough money so he could afford it,” Ennis said just as quietly.

“Nah, it’s the style, you know. Courtney has the say-so.”

“I guess so.”

“Awful glad you came.”

“Yeah, me too. Had enough of that empty house.”

“You know I had to do this. With Courtney’s folks gone to Europe and --”

“I know. You gotta do what you gotta do.”

“Yeah.”

“Hey, Jack?”

“Uh-hum.”

“Strange how Malcolm knows that about Massachusetts.”

Jack blinked in the darkness. “Yeah, it is.”

“Wonder what’s got into him.”

“He’s growing up, I think. Thinking about sex in all different ways.”

“And you’ve been in his sights the last little while, so....”

“I suppose so.”

“Wonder if anybody besides Massachusetts will do that.”

“Wouldn’t do any harm if they did.”

Ennis grunted, and Jack knew there wouldn’t be any more talk on the subject.

For a while they simply lay there in silence, holding each other, breathing sometime in unison, and it was more than enough for Jack.

When Jack had been younger, a lot younger, young enough to be a fool, he’d thought he would be a man for excitement and high living. He’d dreamed of winning the grand prize on the rodeo circuit or inheriting the dealership from Lureen’s father and growing it all through Texas, with branches in Lubbock and Temple, and important people knowing his name.

But the hard times of the heart had taught him another way to live, a better way that was quiet, sweet, and steady as the beginning and ending of days. He didn’t need anything else when he had this, right now, this minute, and when he had Ennis every minute for all the rest of the years of their lives.

“I can’t stay awake no more,” Ennis said with a yawn. “I want to, but I can’t.”

“It’s okay, you close your eyes. Good night.”

“Yeah. G’night. See you in the morning.”

Jack settled himself right where he was, not ready yet to roll away from this comfort and utter satisfaction, this unexpected touching that filled him up. For a minute or two, maybe three, he listened to the silence of the night and to Ennis’s breathing becoming deep and resonant, with an occasional snore that never had bothered Jack’s sleep one bit.

His eyelids fluttered like Sarah Elizabeth’s had, and he knew that sleep for him was not far away. But trembling on the edge of dreams, he smiled into the dark. What a day. He had a grandson who trusted him, a new granddaughter to teach and to love, and Ennis, right here next to him.

In Jack’s world, there was joy.

THE END


End file.
